


Hope and other narcotics

by TheDreamingSpires



Series: we defy explanation [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, Let's be honest, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Temporary Character Death, and we all know he comes back, we all know who dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:00:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8124487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDreamingSpires/pseuds/TheDreamingSpires
Summary: Whatever your soulmate draws or writes appears on your chest, a perfect opportunity to find each other, despite the millions of people to search through. You can write your name, your address, your phone number - realistically, there are no excuses for not finding your soulmate.Dick has never had anything but the scribbles of a particularly angry four year old.





	

“This is it,” Dick announced drunkenly, sloshing his beer bottle around in front of him in what he hoped was a decisive and stately manner. “I’m going to write out my name _one last time_. If I don’t get anything back, then I’m joining one of those dating sites for people who don’t have soulmates.”

There was silence in the sitting room, interrupted only by the ticking of the grandfather clock, and Dick briefly reconsidered how loudly he’d spoken. He’d meant for Tim to hear, and while he’d obviously achieved that, it seemed a few more people than him had got the picture. The awkwardness was palpable, not helped by the fact that he was literally the only person in the room whose soulmate situation was still up in the air. The Titans, it seemed, were a pretty lucky bunch.

“Okay, Dick. That sounds like a good plan,” ventured Wally. “You need to move on, to get past this.”

Dick nodded vigorously, then immediately regretted it and was forced to stand up and rush to the bathroom. Here in Blüdhaven, there was no one to clean up after him if he yacked up on the carpet.

 

***

 

Basically, it went like this. Dick hadn’t got a soulmark until he was about five, which meant his soulmate was younger than him. Fair enough, that was pretty common. At least he wasn’t destined to be one of those poor saps who only got their soulmate for a few years before one of them croaked. When it first appeared, it was just scribbly lines, but his mom told him that that was normal if your soulmate was younger than you. _She’s just a baby, Dickie,_ she’d said patiently, fingers tracing over the lines his soulmate had left on his body from god knows how far away, _she’s littler than you, so you have to be patient._ Dick had nodded proudly, feeling very old and worldly. He was five, and so he understood about soulmarks. His little soulmate was only a _baby,_ and so too stupid. But Dick was a patient boy, and he could wait.

Then his parents died, and then Bruce appeared, and suddenly Dick didn’t really care about soulmates anymore, especially not the silly little girl at the other end of his who could still only just about manage to draw a wobbly house, and that was on a good day. Most of the time, Dick didn’t get anything, or if he did it was just an angry scribble. Ten was pretty early to give up on your soulmate, but then it was also pretty early to realise you were going to have to live your entire life without your parents.

When he made the decision to become Robin, Bruce sat him down for a Bruce-patented ‘serious discussion’, featuring a lot of glaring and posturing and not that many words. Bruce had explained that he himself had given up on finding his soulmate, to the extent that he’d started ignoring the soulmark over his chest. _It wouldn’t be fair_ , he declared, _to do something as stupid as to become a vigilante if he realistically wanted to be of any use to his soulmate_. Bruce himself hadn’t looked at the soulmark on his chest since the day he decided to become the Bat. Dick had agreed, the memory of his parents fresh in his mind. It wouldn’t be fair to find someone perfect for him, to love them, and then to leave them when the Joker inevitably got his act together and actually made good on his constant threats.

Dick remembered this for years, and so Bruce’s enforced repetitions of the rule on an annual basis were completely unnecessary. He too stopped looking at his chest, got affection where he could get it. He was sixteen when he realised that Bruce’s assertions that it wouldn’t be fair on _her_ should probably to expanded to _him or her_ , and even then it didn’t change anything. Bruce just nodded sagely, and went on with the speech, effortlessly amending where necessary, because he was the damn Batman, and judging by his largely robotic nature his soulmate was probably a toaster.

The time Dick voiced this view, he was kicked out of the Manor. Admittedly, it was part of a larger _thing_ , but part of Dick always thought that the toaster comment had really hit home.

 

***

 

Dick’s bed was barely cold, the door barely closed on his retreating, cape-less back, when suddenly there was a new Robin. Dick barely knew Jason, only saw him in snatches. The one time he sought him out they ended up arguing about something, and then Bruce appeared and so Dick had made a tactical retreat.

Jason had been dead for two weeks before anyone bothered to tell him. Bruce had made sure it didn’t make the news.

They didn’t speak for six weeks after that, not even to help each other on a case. In that time, Dick decided on his final _fuck you_ to Bruce, and peered at his chest, properly looked.

It was blank, and wasn’t that poetic. Maybe his soulmate cared as little for him as he had cared for them.

He guessed he deserved it.

 

***

 

Then one day some aliens invaded, just your normal day, and Bruce somehow became the behind the scenes leader of a clique of socially dysfunctional superheroes. Superheroes who now wanted to team up _all the time_ with anyone willing, and so suddenly Nightwing became some kind of adjunct. They wanted him to mediate in the seemingly endless arguments over whether Bruce should be allowed to keep Tim, they wanted him to speak to Bruce directly.

He refused, but he made an effort to be to Tim what he never was to Jason.

And slowly, organically, he and Bruce started to make nice again. They’d never be what they had been before, but they were something.

***

Dick was in the cave the day Batman found his soulmate, and it hurt like knives jabbed into every major artery. He knew how Caesar felt.

Bruce and Hal were arguing _again_ , something about propriety and whether or not Captain Kirk was a suitable role model for a space cop. Dick wasn’t sure how it had come up, wasn’t sure he wanted to. Stayed where he was, tapping away at the computer, watching as Hal helped Bruce patch himself up from where he had apparently been wounded while fighting mystery aliens. No one had really wanted to clarify.

Dick wasn’t entirely sure why Hal was allowed to help where he’d been growled at, but then again, he didn’t really care. As long as Tim was safe, Bruce could do what the hell he wanted.

Hal reached forwards, finished dressing the wound with gauze and liberally applying micropore tape. From next to Bruce, he grabbed a pen and pad, scribbling down the space movies which Bruce _had to watch, you damn heathen_. Midway through his sentence, Hal stopped, and Dick turned to see where his source of entertainment had gone. Tim, half-hidden behind an old stack of sepia files on Poison Ivy, peered out at the scene.

And they all watched as the words _Total Recall, but the 1990 one with Arnie_ lazily appeared on Bruce’s chest.

Dick didn’t stay to see what happened, he just ran upstairs to the safety of Alfred and his shortbread. Typical that Bruce would find his soulmate when he didn’t even want one; that he would get someone who actually understood. Dick had been checking his chest on a daily basis lately, and nothing had appeared. In the dead of night when his fear set in, he’d hastily Googled what it meant when you had nothing for days, weeks.

He had been redirected to a mourning and loss webpage, and informed that it was more than likely his soulmate was dead.

 

***

 

That was where he was now, curled up on the floor of his bathroom in Blüdhaven with most of his upper body resting in Wally’s lap, seriously regretting every choice he had ever made that had led to this moment.

“I’m trying, Wally,” he murmured. “I’m trying to make up for it.”

“Dick, I know you feel guilty for ignoring your soulmate for all these years, but you need to move on.” He shifted so that he could look Dick in the eye. “You’ve read everything you can on this, heck, we all have. They’re dead, or at least not in any fit state to come and look for you.”

“Which is why I have to look for _them_ ,” he moaned in response, hugging his shirt to himself. “What if they’re comatose or something? I have to make up for years of nothing.”

Wally sighed and leaned back against the shower door. “One last try, Dick. That’s what we agreed. You’ll write out your name and number once more, and then that’s it.”

Dick nodded numbly, then went back to throwing up.

 

***

 

It was Christmas Day, and Dick was sitting at the kitchen table at Wayne Manor, as he did every year he and Bruce were on speaking terms. Every other day of the year, Alfred cooked for them and ate separately, but on Christmas Day they all cooked together, and then sat at the small table in the kitchen and ate as a proper family.

Dick was the only one who wasn’t totally feeling the Christmas spirit, from what he could tell. Tim was attempting to explain the cracker joke to Cass, while Bruce and Alfred murmured about the consistency of Christmas pudding and which brandy to use on it this year. Hal was watching proceedings with a vague smile on his face, fighting a losing battle with the metallic cracker hat that was just a bit too small for him.

Dick was already halfway out the door before anyone else realised he’d excused himself.

He headed straight for his old room, shucking off the hideous Christmas jumper that Steph had given him earlier, before standing in front of the mirror. He’d promised Bruce long ago that he’d never think about his soulmate, but he’d broken that promise years ago. Then, he’d promised Wally that he’d get over it, that he’d move on, but now that seemed to have gone up in smoke as well. He was broken, he was uncertain, and to be brutally honest, he was lonely.

“You alright, kid?” asked Hal from the doorway, making Dick spin around defensively. “You seemed in a hurry to get out of there.”

“I just needed some air,” Dick parried, watching listlessly as Hal crossed his bedroom and settled himself in his desk chair.

“Not full of the Christmas spirit, huh.” It wasn’t a question, and neither of them even bothered to pretend that it was.

“Not this year,” Dick admitted.

“Anything I can do?”

“Not unless that ring of yours can bring people back from the dead.”

Hal smiled sadly, taking his ring off his finger and laying it in his palm before forming a fist over it. “Not in this colour, unfortunately. You’d have to wait for black to be back in stock.”

Dick nodded, turning back to the mirror. “I kind of guessed we’d have Barry back by now if you could get people back.” He’d accidently walked in on Bruce and Hal’s mutual mourning sessions over Barry and Jason more than once, but he didn’t bother to start to list the people Hal would have brought back if he could. It would have been depressingly long.

“Who’re you wishing for?” Hal asked, effectively changing the subject. Dick immediately felt bad for mentioning Barry, for bringing up the weakness that everyone knew rankled with Hal. The inability to deal with yellow he’d got over. That his best friend had died and there was nothing he could do still haunted him. The amount of time he spent fawning over Wally was testament to that.

“My soulmate,” he admitted, realising that there was no sense keeping it from Hal. Wally would probably tell him the minute he asked, what with how Wally seemed to think that Hal was basically everyone’s big brother – Dick’s especially, now Hal and Bruce were a thing.

Hal winced, making eye-contact with Dick in the mirror. “That’s rough. If you don’t mind my asking, how do you know?”

“Because there’s nothing here,” grumbled Dick, ripping open his button-down and baring his chest at the Hal, turning his back on the mirror.

Hal’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and he gestured at Dick’s chest with his hand. “That doesn’t look like nothing to me.”

 

***

 

The scribbles were back, and Dick had never been happier. What his ten year old self saw as a failure, he saw as anything but. They were _alive_. According to the internet, they were likely just revived from a coma, but still. They were alive, and that meant they could see what Dick was doing.

So Dick wrote, constantly. He scribbled down his name, his phone number, his favourite colour. At one point he just wrote out his feelings on the episode of _Say Yes to the Dress_ he was watching with Babs.

Still, he got nothing but scribbles in return.

Then, one day, he got a word. The first word he had ever had, in all his twenty six years.

_Coming_

 

***

 

Basically, it went like this. Some crazed Joker-wannabe in a red helmet and biker leathers almost killed Bruce, and so Dick joined in the fray.

Then, the man knew who Bruce was.

Then, the man was Jason.

And suddenly, Dick knew.

 

***

 

He stood on the roof of Giuseppe’s Bakery, not even bothering to hide behind the chimney stacks. Jason knew he was there. Hell, he’d invited him.

A cloud obscured the moon briefly, creating an inky black patch of gloom on the opposite side of the roof, the side already shaded by the cathedral. When the cloud had passed, Jason was there, helmet gleaming in the moonlight.

“I know who you are,” Dick called out, proud at how steady he kept his voice.

“What do you want, a gold star?” Jason called back, laughing as he did so. He started forward, eventually coming to a stop a few feet in front of Dick. “Funny how you’ve got time to be in Gotham when I’m gone, but when I was here you were always away.”

“Jason,” Dick breathed, reaching forward. “It wasn’t like that, it wasn’t about you.”

Jason chuckled again, reaching forward himself. He put one hand on Dick’s chin, pulling his mouth open. “Oh, Dickie, don’t sweat it. I understand hating the Bat and loving him too. Hell, I think that might be the one thing I’m better at than you,” he leaned forward conspiratorially. “Well, other than killing bad guys, but someone I think you’re not interested in competing in that event.”

Dick arched away from Jason’s touch, putting some distance between them. “That doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry. For everything.”

Jason froze, clenching his hands. After a moment, he reached up to his helmet, popping open clasps that ran along the bottom. With a slight hiss, the whole helmet opened, and he pulled it off his head, dropping it on the floor at his feet. Dick knew that Jason was taller than him now, by a good few inches. He was wider, too, his shoulders looking more like a line-backer’s than a gymnast’s like Dick’s did. His face, though, Dick wasn’t expecting. The boyish good looks and impish grin were gone, replaced with cold, grim determination. His jawline was set and harsh, and a shock of white hair fell in front of his domino mask from a mess of black hair where before it had been red.

“Oh, Jay,” Dick murmured, touching the white hair lightly. “What happened to you?”

“Well, I died, and it kind of went downhill from there.”

 

***

 

Jason’s Gotham crash pad was far more ordinary than Dick had expected. He’d been preparing himself for a weapons bunker with a bed in the corner, covered in newspaper clippings about the Bat and maybe the occasional dartboard with Tim’s picture tacked to it.

Instead, he got a third floor walk-up in a slightly run-down residential building, a selection of barely furnished rooms painted off-cream. The only thing which was definitively _Jason’s_ , and not just something which could easily have been left behind by the previous tenant, was a small stack of elderly looking books, neatly shoved into the corner of what Dick could only guess was the bedroom, judging by the mound of bedding.

“Not exactly the Manor, but hey, its home,” muttered Jason, shoving past Dick to get to the kitchen. He’d replaced his helmet on the journey over, but now removed it again, placing it carefully on the sideboard in the kitchen before raiding the fridge.

Dick leaned against the sideboard, ran his hands over the helmet. After a moment, he reached up and pulled off his own domino mask, discarding it on the side. “Jason, we need to talk about this.”

Jason span around, a beer in each hand, and gave one to Dick. Seeing Dick without his domino mask, he reached up and fiddled with the corner of his, but ultimately left it on. Dick could sympathise. There was something comforting about that last level of anonymity. “About what, Dickie? I’m back. That’s the end of it.”

“But it isn’t, is it?” Dick insisted, putting the bottle on the side and frowning. “Jay, please. Talk to me.”

“About what, Dick?” Jason snarled in response. “About how a psychopathic clown nearly beat me to death with a crowbar, then blew me up, and that still wasn’t enough for Bruce to do anything? About how not only was that whole incident a textbook example of how little he cared about me, but also featured the exciting turn in events of my own mother selling me out?”

“Jason-,” Dick whispered, trying to get closer, but Jason just surged away.

“Every single person who has ever claimed to give a shit about me has made me regret ever knowing them. Every single one, Dick. So excuse me if I don’t want to have a heart to heart about soulmates, if I don’t want to believe you when you say that we can be each other’s everything.” Jason visibly deflated, collapsing slightly against the fridge, fingers loosening on the neck of his beer bottle to the extent that Dick was mildly worried it would fall. “Because that isn’t how the world works, and it’s only a matter of time before you leave.”

Dick realised with a start that was how it had always been with Jason. Their relationship had always played out in brief spurts of intense emotion, normally jealousy and hate. Even when Jason was gone, Dick couldn’t think about him without wanted to cry, without feeling physically sick about his failure.

“I’m not going to leave, Jason. Not by choice. I can’t promise that the Joker won’t get a shot in, or that Blüdhaven won’t manage to off another of her finest, but I can promise that if I go, it isn’t because I want to.”

Jason looked at him, squinting slightly through his domino mask. Dick took this as a good sign and moved forwards, pulling the mask off his face and staring him directly in the eye from less than a foot away. They shared breath for a moment, just gazing at each other, properly taking in the changes in that they’d missed. Jason had a scar reaching from the corner of his left eye to his ear, and Dick reached out to trace it. Jason, meanwhile, seemed distracted by a small line of shrapnel scars just below Dick’s hairline, a bullet wound scar on his collarbone.

When Jason finally leaned forward and kissed him, it was just as natural as breathing.

 

***

 

In the end, it went like this. It took almost a year for Dick to persuade Jason to come to the Manor, but when he did it all went surprisingly well. When the pulled up on the drive they found Hal sitting on the steps up to the main doors, idly making piles of gravel. They had a quick introduction, Hal made sure Jason knew he was on his side, and they all went in. Jason and Bruce wandered off for an intense period of soul-searching at one point, but Hal ensured them that his ring would inform him if they started hitting each other. The closest they came to blows was actually between Steph and Tim, and that was about cake rather than anything else.

When they got back to Blüdhaven (because Jason understood that Dick needed space from Bruce, hell, he needed it himself), they sat on their bed with a pint of ice cream between them, both lost in their own thoughts.

“Dick?” he asked quietly.

“What’s up, Jay?”

“I’m glad you’ve stayed.”

Dick looked up from his spoon, saw the vulnerability in Jason’s eyes. Saw the scrawled address of a possible drugs mule he’d written down earlier, lightly stencilled on Jason’s chest. Looked down at his own chest to see another scribble, this one more curved and smooth than they used to be.

“I’m glad you came.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into the Batman fandom in any of its iterations, so I hope I've done it justice! This is kind of a riff of another AU I'm writing for a different fandom, which again uses the 'what your soulmate draws' trope, but is a lot longer and a lot less angsty.  
> Thank you for reading, and please let me know if it doesn't make sense. I'm currently desperately on the hunt for a beta reader, so please let me know if you're game.


End file.
